John Coleman's climate change conspiracy theory

A new NASA temperature analysis to be officially released this week shows that 2009 tied with 2007 for the second warmest year in the 130 years of global thermometer records. The analysis, which was distributed by top NASA climate scientist James Hansen and published on the realclimate.org Web site on Sunday, also shows that 2009 was the warmest year on record for the Southern Hemisphere.

In a separate analysis, the U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) found that 2009 tied with 2006 for the fifth warmest year on record. The two government centers use different data analysis methods, which accounts for the differences between the findings.

However, according to a new one-hour local TV special from San Diego, hosted by KUSI-TV's chief meteorologist John Coleman, both of the 2009 temperature summaries are fatally flawed. Coleman's show trumpets a new report that alleges that federal climate agencies have been manipulating climate data for years in order to show more significant warming than has actually been occurring.

"When you see a news report that the government has found that a certain month or season of the year was the warmest in history or that five of the warmest years on record were in the last decade, don't believe it. Those reports were based on manipulated data," Coleman states. "It hurts me to say this, but our nation's primary climate data agencies, part of our U.S. government, are lying to us."

Coleman made a name for himself in the global warming debate in 2007 when he published an impassioned article on his TV station's Web site that proclaimed climate change to be a "giant scam." (Here is what I said about that article). Coleman was a co-founder of The Weather Channel, although he has not been affiliated with that network for more than two decades.

A recent cover story in Columbia Journalism Review portrays him as the leader of a large group of TV meteorologists who disagree with the scientific consensus on global climate change, which holds that emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are causing global surface temperatures to increase.

The questions about NASA and NCDC data center on how government scientists process readings from the thousands of thermometers located around the world. The report that Coleman features was funded by the Science and Public Policy Institute, and conducted by computer programmer E. Michael Smith and Joe D'Aleo, a meteorologist turned ardent climate skeptic who founded the skeptic web site icecap.us.

Smith and D'Aleo's work purports to show that when they process global temperature data, the main U.S. climate centers filter out cooler weather stations and add in warmer ones, among other techniques, to show more warming.

"We can only surmise that it was done to show more warming," D'Aleo tells Coleman about the alleged manipulation.

Both NCDC and NASA dispute this assertion. "NASA has not been involved in any manipulation of climate data used in the annual GISS global temperature analysis," NASA's Hansen said in a statement responding to Coleman's television program.

Theoretically, the analysis could have some merit to it. But the fact that it was first revealed as "breaking news" in Coleman's documentary, which any high school Earth science teacher would give a failing grade to, does not lend it much support.

NCDC posted an explanation of its temperature analysis methods on its Web site on Jan. 15, and NASA's methods are also posted online.

Flimsy arguments

There are many credible arguments against the conclusions of climate scientists and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Climate science, like any branch of science, is far from "settled." But Coleman's program, which you can watch online in four installments, offers nothing more than a loose collection of long-debunked arguments against the conclusion that human emissions of greenhouse gases are helping to cause global temperatures to increase, and features a parade of climate change skeptics who portray climate science as a giant conspiracy.

There is healthy skepticism, and then there is paranoia.

Coleman pins the bulk of his scientific argument on the fact that, according to historical records of temperature change and atmospheric composition, there is a lag between the rise and fall of carbon dioxide and the rise and fall of temperatures. But it is well known in the climate science community that carbon dioxide can act at various times as either a climate feedback or a climate forcing mechanism -- that is, it can amplify changes already underway, or instigate them in the first place. This has been explored in numerous studies and has been explained by a wide variety of sources, including this 2007 piece at the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, this page at NOAA, and Spencer Weart's comprehensive "Discovery of Global Warming."

Yet Coleman still cites the feedback/forcing issue as evidence that human emissions of carbon dioxide do not cause climate change.

Furthermore, Coleman claims he is being apolitical in his criticism of climate science, which is bizarre considering how overtly political his documentary actually is. In one moment, Coleman says the program is not about advocating a political view, yet in the next he says the number one reason for exploring the "other side" to climate science is because the EPA has classified carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and this, Coleman says, "will lead to major new taxes and fees..."

"The EPA ruling may have a major impact on your way of life," he warns viewers.

The second reason Coleman gives for speaking out? Because the Senate may soon vote on cap and trade legislation, which he says will raise the costs of "everything that's part of our lives today."

The third reason for his apolitical approach to climate coverage is also clearly political: United Nations negotiations on what he terms a climate change "tax treaty."

In this era of decreasing science coverage on TV newscasts, a full hour of television time devoted to climate change is a rare and precious commodity. It's unfortunate that Coleman so thoroughly wasted the opportunity.

The views expressed here are the author's alone and do not represent any position of the Washington Post, its news staff or the Capital Weather Gang.

If you had read the climategate emails, then you would know that realclimate.com is purely and simply the mouthpiece of the climategate propaganda machine and is no more to be trusted than was the old USSR Kremlin propaganda machine.

The fact that people who call themselves "scientists" (I wouldn't) would even consider operating a clearly political website like realclimate is about all the proof you need that climate "science" has nothing to do with real science, and everything to do with politics.

I find this article to be underhanded. Rather than addressing the issue of whether thermometer data around the globe was cherry-picked by U.S. researchers to increase warming, you instead engaged in a collateral attack on Coleman while attempting in a smooth fashion to indicate an air of objectivity.

I'd also like to point out that a Russian agency accused Hadley researchers of doing the exact same thing: cherry-picking thermometer data in Russia to show warming. Russian TV reported that here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eigKN8BouM

Steve114z: You have a fair point, although I disagree with your assessment of the article. It's hard to get around the fact that Coleman's documentary was so misleading and erroneous that it actually cast doubt on the analysis in question. I acknowledged that, despite this, there may be some truth to the analysis, however, although NOAA and NASA dispute that. We will be covering this story as it unfolds.

In my humble opinion, many accusations have been made against the global surface temperature analyses; unfortunately I see little of substance.

It should not be up to NCDC to prove each and every accusation false; the accuser has a responsibility to prove the case. In my humble opinion they haven't come close.

Even if NCDC made the attempt would anyone listen? The scientists in "climategate" have explained their comments, quite reasonably in my humble opinion. The accusations keep coming.

People have a vested interest in their work yes. James Hansen does, so does Roger Pielke (sp?)(who by the way I do take quite seriously).

Michael Mann has been strongly attacked and now the National Science Foundation is under attack for funding his work. Michael Mann's work was investigated twice by panels. One panel, appointed by the National Academy of Science, found little wrong with his work ( although they did find he really didn't have enough data before 1600). Another panel suggested changes in his procedures; they made little difference in his results (or so I've read).

Does anyone or any huge corporation have vested interest in weakening support for action on global warming? I wonder ...(not really).

In youy article you state. "In a separate analysis, the U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) found that 2009 tied with 2006 for the fifth warmest year on record. The two government centers use different data analysis methods, which accounts for the differences between the findings"

The fact that different analysis of the data yields different results shows us that subjective decisions must be made that affect the outcome such as which stations to include. No one can argue that NASA or the NOAA do not have singnifigant bias to show warming so who audits them?

This is aking to an accountant who is paid based on profit figures doing the books, having no accounting rules and no subsequent audit afterwards. He can show you whatever the heck you want to see.

Global temperature reconstruction needs specific rules and quality audits to ensure that the data presented to the public is unbiased and follows a similar methodology.
Until then you can't trust anything that comes out of them as they are simply global temperature guesses by none other than the biased james Hansen and those of his ilk. If you believe that the data is not biased, would you like to purchase some Enron Shares Andrew?

As usual, this new artificial scandal is a tempest in a teapot, if that. It comes down to whether or nor you can use one weather station's data as a substitute for another station's data with respect to climate. And in many cases, the answer will be a resounding yes. Let me paint an analogy as to how this works.

Let's say you've got two trampolines, one down at the seashore and one high in the mountains. Clearly, one is much higher in elevation than the other, but does that matter for how high you can jump off the trampolines? Maybe, but maybe not.

So you videotape yourself jumping off both trampolines and you find that, to within some small margin of error, you can jump 10 feet off each trampoline.

What Coleman, D'Aleo, and Smith are saying is essentially that you're jumping only 10 feet into the air off the trampoline at the seashore, but that you're jumping thousands of feet into the air when your jumping off a trampoline in the mountains.

Put back into terms of temperature, what matters isn't so much the absolute temperature (equivalent to elevation for a trampoline) of the shore or the mountains, but rather the changes in temperature from one place to another. And if measurements show that changes in temperature in downtown LA are nearly 100% correlated with changes in temperature in San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Bernadino, then it's reasonable to only use one of the four stations instead of all three.

To the average person, Mike Mann's comments in the emails with the East Anglia faculty look "fishy".

And when the average person hears about the construction of the "hockey stick" it sounds fishy.

[Immediately after "hockey stick" appeared in publication I saw that Mann's statistical criteria selected temperature data for which the time rate of change of temperature was proportional to the temperature. That defines an exponential function of temperature with time - meaning that no other function than an exponential function of temperature was possible from Mann's construction. I wrote the journal editor but my letter went unanswered]

Mann's work and CRU emails just don't look right - nobody's calling anything a "conspiracy" but the stuff just looks "fishy"

Brian: Have you watched Coleman's TV special? (All of it?) He clearly lays out a case for a conspiracy, full of government lies and manipulation of data and an obscure money trail. Sorry man, but you're just wrong on that one. It is a conspiracy theory.

That said, I don't think people are arguing that Mike Mann's Hockey Stick was a conspiracy.

I would also say that the Federal Government demonstrated to a jury that Enron managers Skilling and Lay were guilty of "fraud and conspiracy" based on emails that incriminated Skilling and Lay - despite Skilling's and Lay's "rational explanations" of how these emails didn't demonstrate they were "guilty" of "anything."

The emails from East Anglia University were a lot more "incriminating" than Enron emails, actually

Your Exactly correct about the enron e-mails in comparison to climategate. The difference here is the scale. Enron was a large company worth billions, global warming affects the entire worlds economy we are talking trillions of dollars worldwide, combine this with a religious ferver to prove global warming (as they say in the climategate e-mails) and you have a problem.

The fact that NOAA, NASA, CRU are all comprised of biased individuals that perform estimates to create a global temperature is worrying. The fact that they get to choose their own methodology is even more troubling.

Having James Hansen guestimate the average weather temperature of the earth is like getting a financial opinion on Enron from Ken Lay without any audit or accounting procedures. ( Even then problems can occur as we have seen)

This is climate science, not standards, no checks and balances, no Audits and no independant peer review.

John Coleman is exactly correct, the temperature data from NASA and NOAA has no chance of being accurate and in his program he points out many questionable practises that point to bias.

If climate science wants to be taken seriously, create a standardized credible procedure for global temperature reconstruction. Until then NASA Global temperature averages are just Jim Hansens opinion.

Inasmuch as the AGW alarmists have made of "global warming" a political issue - by proposing emissions trading schemes like "cap-and-trade," which penalize the individual consumer's benefit from every human action involving the combustion of fossil fuels - the refutation of the AGW hypothesis necessarily takes on political overtones.

Thus to call Mr. Coleman's documentary politically biased is damned strange. It was the policy recommendations of the AGW fraudsters which brought this "Cargo Cult Science" to the fore as a matter for public consideration and governmental action.

Might as well condemn the treatment of a snakebitten patient with antivenom as "poisoning."

If it is "political" - and by some coloration purely and invidiously partisan - to take up a public position and offer reasoned arguments in opposition to plans which waste the substance of the private citizen to no beneficial purpose whatsoever, then how is the campaign of the AGW alarmists to plunder and impoverish their fellow human beings NOT to be condemned as purely political?

Especially as the CRU correspondents and their collaborators are now known to have been convinced that AGW was not happening, and that the remedies they proposed could not possibly have mitigated such a phenomenon even if it had been taking place?

It would seem that the reek of "political" corruption is far more profound in the Warmist camp, and Mr. Coleman has merely rendered a public service of great value in pointing that out.

Capital Weather Gang has provided a wonderful service to MD, VA, DC about the local weather, information of historical interest, and valuable info to gardeners etc who depend on the accurate forecasts that Capital Weather consistently provides!

I don't think Capital Weather Gang forays into AGW and defense of AGW advocates and apologists have not been so high quality

Since posters are bringing up Michael Mann's credibility (Dadmeister, BrianValentine), could I just mention that along with other dubious works he's undertaken, he co-authored a report with Eric Steig earlier last year that concluded that West Antarctica was warming. For this particular report, they used data that they had to guess would have been produced as no weather stations existed in the area. Kevin Trenberth (IPCC lead author) said "I have to say I remain somewhat skeptical. It is hard to make data where none exist."

Tucci78 wrote, "If it is "political" - and by some coloration purely and invidiously partisan - to take up a public position and offer reasoned arguments in opposition to plans which waste the substance of the private citizen to no beneficial purpose whatsoever, then how is the campaign of the AGW alarmists to plunder and impoverish their fellow human beings NOT to be condemned as purely political?"

You know, the Bush Administration very famously and unprecedentedly politicized all of the federal agencies - especially the ones that had anything to do with science. It strikes me as highly illogical that anyone could credibly claim that the US government for the past 8 years has been doctoring the weather records so as to support a global warming conspiracy. If anything, they would have had the incentive to do the exact opposite and doctor the records to be anti-global warming - and since they weren't ashamed of doing such deeds in other situations in other agencies, it just doesn't seem very credible that that would support Coleman's claim "that federal climate agencies have been manipulating climate data for years in order to show more significant warming than has actually been occurring.

I don't think the Federal agencies "doctored" things to make it "appear" that AGW was real, Hohandy, but I do think that a lot of people were convinced by the the "authority" alone of the IPCC - without digging into it too deeply on their own.

IPCC was touted as the "final authority," pretty much, and people took it as given that there was no credible argument against what IPCC had to say.

I don't think that it's unreasonable to say that the IPCC infallibility is currently questioned by many who formerly did not question IPCC infallibility.

Look at NWS data base temperature data for the US yourself.

Generally they display 60 or 70 years worth of data for all the US regions where there is a certified weather station.

People like D'Aleo have pointed out that urban heat and industrial interferences have not been accounted for in the weather station data - but more importantly, there were new statistical criteria applied in 1990's that provided a "positive slope" to temperature data over the years for which no temperature increase over time was statistically found in the data before then.

I really think it was the result of the power of suggestion.

The IPCC did some good work, but they just overplayed their hand.

It happens - rock star status and all the accolades goes to people's heads. I don't fault them for that, but I do for their mud slinging at their critics.

They wind up with more mud on themselves than their critics; the sensible amongst them have already learned this

If you don't believe in global warming and mankind's emissions causing it, just wait. Luckily, there is a simple and cheap way to cool the Earth down immediately: just add a little (more) sun dimming aerosol to the upper atmosphere.

Scientific illiteracy plagues America, and furthermore, political ideology seems to trump perception of reality. The result is irrational and counter-productive public policy.

The long and short of it is that for a democracy to function you need an informed populace. Since we don't have the first, we don't have the second either. :(

"I don't think the Federal agencies "doctored" things to make it "appear" that AGW was real, Hohandy, but I do think that a lot of people were convinced by the the "authority" alone of the IPCC - without digging into it too deeply on their own."

So basically then you're agreeing that Coleman is full of crap about this

Mr Freedman says there is a "scientific consensus" for catastrophic warming.

I have asked journalists, politicians & alarmist lobbyists now totalling in the thousands to name 2 prominent scientists, not funded by government or an alarmist lobby who have said that we are seeing a catastrophic degree of warming & none of them have yet been able to do so. I extend this same invitation here to Mr Freedman, or any post journalist, or any reader, or anybody at all.

There is not & never was a genuine scientific consensus on this, though scientists seeking government funds have been understandably reluctant to speak. If there were anything approaching a consensus it would, with over 31,000 scientists having signed the Oregon petition saying it is bunk, it would be easy to find a similar number of independent scientists saying it was true, let alone 2. The whole thing depends on a very small number of people & a massive government publicity machine, both very well funded by the innocent taxpayer.

I am trying to give people the benefit of the doubt Hohandy, and distinguish between a "willful intent to deceive people" and a subconscious effort to reject things that don't "appear consistent with AGW."

This doesn't apply to everyone, though, and a few folks may have crossed the line between "hopeful" and "willful" - especially as the years 2000s progressed and AGW seemed increasingly doubtful.

"Inject particulate sulfur in the stratosphere to create an aerosol to cool the Earth down."

I don't really see why these particles wouldn't be oxidized to sulfur dioxide then sulfur trioxide in the stratosphere and this would wind up in the troposphere as sulfuric acid in a matter of months, depending on the size of the particles

Andrew, you must think your readers don't click on the links you provide, because your attempt to debunk the repot Coleman cited falls woefully short.

You provide no defense for why there was such drastic changes in which stations were used to compute temperatures. Nor do you provide any explanation for why there was a shift toward using lower altitude/urban-centered reporting stations.

Furthermore, you have yet to provide an explanation for why raw data needs to be "adjusted" before being released for peer scientists to review.

Lastly, you continue to defend the use of proxy temperature data as accurate for the times when there were no accurate temperature readings. Yet if these same proxies are used for temperatures in recent times, they do not show the same increase in temperatures that the thermometers show.

These are among many issues that you not only have failed to answer, but seem to refuse when people like Mr. Q ask them. You instead insult them and act like these questions don't matter, even when the entire hypothesis of AGW depends on them.

I know you probably think I am some hack paid by the oil companies to be a thorn in your side. However, in my day job I develop metrics and metrics reports for my organization to determine how well it is performing. It is a constant struggle to determine not only what data should be measured, but what data should NOT be measured and for what reasons. By excluding or including data from certain sources we can either make their performance look either really good or really bad, while the real answer is usually somewhere in between. There are often good reasons for excluding or including certain data. But I have yet to hear any good explanation from you that addresses the questions posed above. So consider this a challenge to prove that your beloved AGW theory actually has merit.

1) IPCC says so [actually, because a few strong personalities who hi-jacked the IPCC demanded that it be so]

2) Coleman is involved with SPPI somehow

3) Jim Hansen and Albert Gorp are good pals

4) All my friends who support the leftist planks of the Democrat Party platform tell me that people who don't believe in AGW are "flat Earthers" who think the "moon landing was staged in the Mojave" and are "anti-science" and are in the pay of "Exxon-Mobil"

Signing a BINDING AGREEMENT under United Nations takes away FREEDOM.
Promising poor nations money to sign a binding agreement is bribery
to take their authority to govern their resources leading to conflicts and wars.
CAP and TRADE is a loophole for rich nations to avoid compliance and
it invites and creates bribery, corruption, bondage and servitude.
It redirects farmers from growing food to fuel creating a food crisis.

It continues the same lifestyle that pollutes our air, land, water
and food leading to disease and death.
It discourages animals that are vital to planet life because they give off gas.
Animals spread seeds and fertilize the land and are security in famine.

The lasting and sustainable solution has been given to the United Nation,
Ban Ki-Moon, US presidents Clinton, Bush and Barack Obama, Al Gore,
the EU, COP15, for the G-8, G-20 and to major religious leaders.

The employment lifestyle causes the world problems.
A garden paradise lifestyle would reverse and solve them easily, quickly,
fairly and inexpensively. It is the only sustainable lifestyle that reverses and
solves the pollution of our air, land, water and food, energy crisis, disease,
war, immigration, reoccurring financial crises, and social problems including
youth and elderly care.

New technology, jobs and money are not the solution;
they only create more problems and continue the lifestyle that created
the world problems.

Leviticus 26 God promises rain in due season and healthy crops, people and
animals for those who follow His wisdom.
To those who reject it, He promises terror and 4 x 7 curses UNTIL we
turn to follow as it is written in truth, not as religions teach.

If survival, freedom, peace, good health and good food are the true goals,
why does the United Nations Climate Conference turn to confusion, binding
legal agreements and oppressions that cannot do anything to stop pollution
and destruction of our planet?

Does everyone remember just 2.5 years ago when there was a big stink about NASA reordering their "top 10 warmest years on record" list?

Steve McIntyre (or was it Leticia?) discovered a math error in their calculation. NASA ended up issuing a mea culpa and changing the order back to what it had been.

That was back in August 2007.

Jim Hansen was UPSET! He said the error was no big deal. The error was something like 0.15 C and Hansen said it was no big deal. He even mocked McIntyre for making a big deal out of it! Hansen wrote that perhaps [McIntyre] "a light not on upstairs". Extremely condescending. Which is a rather odd position to take toward someone who single handedly reverse engineered Hansen's code and found Hansen's Y2K error. But I digress.

While Hansen was busy mocking McIntyre and trying to make light of his latest error, Hansen said, "The net effect averaged over the U.S. was an error of about 0.15C or less in the post-2000 years, WELL WITHIN THE UNCERTAINTY BAR THAT WE GIVE." [emphasis mine] (see page 37 of this pdf at Judicial Watch)

And Hansen's underling, Reto Ruedy (a co-author of the latest study which Andrew linked to), said, "He concentrates on US time series which (US covering less than 2% of the world) is so noisy and HAS SUCH A LARGE MARGIN OF ERROR THAT NO CONCLUSIONS CAN BE DRAWN FROM IT AT THIS POINT; ..." [again, emphasis mine] (see page 36 of the same pdf as above)

Now, less than three years later, they are making a might big deal out of a temperature change which they mocked just 2.5 years ago. Oh the irony! And did they accidentally omit the margin of error bars from their latest report? I suspect not.

And as if on cue, Mr. Freedman dutifully reports their findings. Never once mentioning the margin of error or how many years fall within it.

Mr. Q.

PS. If you want some entertaining reading, jump to page 71 of that pdf. "No - we cannot draw any conclusions about our planet from the US data ..."

All of the deniers here had better be right. It's clear that nothing substantial has any chance of being done to address global warming until the situation is absolutely dire. And, even in that case, I expect most of the posters here to say it's just a temporary warming unrelated to greenhouse gas emissions.

All of the deniers here had better be right. It's clear that nothing substantial has any chance of being done to address global warming until the situation is absolutely dire. And, even in that case, I expect most of the posters here to say it's just a temporary warming unrelated to greenhouse gas emissions.

NASA's errors are essentially limits defined by themselves. NASA's errors should be derived in conjunction with what others have reported. Then, any systematic bias by NASA would be revealed BECAUSE, NASA's reported data would not represent the means of the independently derived errors.

NASA's reported data would consistently be too high with respect to the calculated errors.

I hate to say it guys, but Jim Hansen is a really whacked out activist, which in my opinion makes him anything but a credible scientist (Let alone a credible individual in general). Hansen is even worse than Dr. Mann, and that is saying quite a lot (Considering how Dr. Mann was caught perpetrating an intentional fraud). RC is Dr. Mann's illegitimate interwebz step-child.

Why are the skeptics here ignoring the SATELLITE data that has been available since the 1970s?? (Wait I already know the answer... lol)

RSS satellite temperature readings show the global temperatures have been warming .153 C/ decade when averaged over the last 30 years. (note: C is the same as K when incremental measurements are taken).

These temperature increases are in line with both the land weather stations and weather balloon (radiosonne) temperature measurements. It is also in the higher range of the IPCC projections.

(Note RSS climatologists are also the guys who found Spencer/Christy's clerical arithmetic errors in UAH, forcing them to admit to warming in their satellite data --although shhh they don't like to admit their satellite data now shows warming too, especially if one ONLY counts after 1998 after a large El Nino caused a big spike... )

and does anyone remember Chris Landsea's open letter when he resigned from the IPCC? He warned everyone five years ago what was going on there. It is a pity that so few listened to him.

--begin quote--
After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized.

...

My work on hurricanes, and tropical cyclones more generally, has been widely cited by the IPCC. For the upcoming AR4, I was asked several weeks ago by the Observations chapter Lead Author – Dr. Kevin Trenberth – to provide the writeup for Atlantic hurricanes. As I had in the past, I agreed to assist the IPCC in what I thought was to be an important, and politically-neutral determination of what is happening with our climate.

Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.

I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.
--end quote--

What a joke. I can see it now: 'Migratory bird flock killing machines to be used to supply you with the power to run your refrigerator!"

Great invention. What would enviro mentals have to say if coal operators made the announcement: "We're doing our very best to stop the killing of migratory bird flocks with our coal electric operation!"